A01=Camille Bordas
Author_Camille Bordas
baby reindeer
big cast novel
bob mortimer
campus novel
Category=FBA
Category=FU
comedy
comedy festival
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
funny books
george saunders
percival everett
stand-up
the satsuma complex
Product details
- ISBN 9781805220060
- Weight: 460g
- Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
- Publication Date: 04 Jul 2024
- Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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'Utterly charming ... Bordas is an invaluable new voice' George Saunders
'A disquisition into the nature of comedy and creativity. Like the best comedians ... Bordas is alert to the deeper joke' Sunday Times
'Amusing... impressive' New York Times
'Marvellously engaging and entertaining ... full of terrific moments and cutting dialogue' Independent
Every comedian knows that there's a line between sharp and cruel, that sad becomes funny at the right angle, that any moment in life, however painful or triumphant, has the potential to become a punchline. At the Chicago Stand-up School, success is about the material.
But maybe Artie is too handsome to be taken seriously on stage, Olivia too scared to examine her past, and Phil too afraid to cause harm. Their teachers are obsessed with failure: Kruger trying to command his father's respect, Ashbee weary of the way his Blackness attracts a type of white admirer, Dorothy wondering how her talent is connected to her loneliness. Whether a visiting comedian-the famous, controversy-steeped Manny Reinhardt-will do more to help or to harm their cause remains to be seen.
Set over the course of a single day, and shifting exquisitely between several points of view, The Material examines life through the eyes of a band of outsiders bound together by the need to laugh, and the desire to make others laugh even harder.
Camille Bordas is the author of three previous prize-winning novels. The third, How to Behave in a Crowd, was the first she wrote in English. The earlier two, Partie Commune and Les Treize Desserts, were written in her native French. Her short stories regularly appear in the New Yorker. Born in France, raised in Mexico City and Paris, she currently lives in Chicago.
